Boeing might seem like the target of China’s tariff ire. But it is those who use the Boeing planes—airlines—that are the most immediately vulnerable. Washington and Beijing’s tariff lists are just proposals for now. Nothing changes right away. The Trump administration has given until May 22 for businesses to chime in with comments and has another 180 days to decide whether to move ahead. China put no timeline on its retaliatory measures, including tariffs on planes. Negotiations seem likely. Yet even if the tariff proposals never come to fruition, a hit to sentiment—and economic growth in general—could have a direct impact on the trans-Pacific air travel, a fast growing, but highly competitive part of the airline business. Nearly 3m Chinese visited the US in the year through Sept 2017, triple the annual rate at the start of the decade. <br/>
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Boeing could fall victim to the escalating trade dispute between the US and China after Beijing announced a potential 25% tariff on US-made aircraft that would affect the 737NG narrowbody. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced April 4 that it plans to impose this new tariff on US$50b worth of US exports, including aircraft, soybeans and autos. The aircraft tariff would apply to narrowbodies weighing between 15 and 45 tonnes, which would include the 737NG but not the heavier 737MAX. The announcement comes after the US announced a 25% tariff on some 1,300 Chinese products. In 2017, Boeing delivered 202 aircraft to Chinese airlines, of which at least 100 were 737NGs.The number of 737NGs delivered to Chinese airlines account for about one-third of Boeing’s total annual production. <br/>
European air traffic management organisation Eurocontrol has resumed normal operations following a software misalignment that caused its Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System to fail for several hours April 3, causing delays to thousands of flights in Europe. “The trigger event was an incorrect link between the testing of a new software release and the live operations system; this led to the deletion of all current flight plans on the live system. We are confident that there was no outside interference,” Eurocontrol said April 4. The air traffic management organisation, which serves as Europe’s “network manager,” could not immediately say how many flights were delayed by the outage of the capacity/demand-balancing system. It had said earlier that it expected 29,500 flights within Europe, and that half could be delayed. <br/>